


Fictober Drabbles

by scullywolf



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-17 21:59:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12374970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf
Summary: Exactly 100 words a day, for the month of October (2017)





	1. Driving

**Author's Note:**

> The titles of these drabbles are prompts by stoickovic on Tumblr.

Initially it was exciting, hashing out theories, seeing countless parts of the country through the side window of a Ford Taurus. Later, it grew stifling, the droning monotony of highway lines a depressing reflection of their endless and unchanging pursuit of the Truth. Later still, long hours on the road meant idly wandering hands and interlaced fingers, the bounds of propriety tested in the semi-privacy of a darkened car.

For a long time after he was gone, the phantom crack of sunflower seeds echoed, and her hands threatened to float away without the reassuring weight of his to anchor them.


	2. Flashlight

It is nearly midnight when she parks in front of the house after Christian Fearon’s surgery. Exhaustion tugs at her every step, making the walk to the front door feel nearly interminable.

Inside, her gaze lands on the coffee table, empty but for a massive tactical flashlight like the kind they used to carry into the woods, so many years ago, and a folded piece of paper. She sets down her briefcase and picks up the note, immediately warmed by his familiar scrawl.

“The darkness may always find us, but we’ll just have to keep shining all the brighter. -M”


	3. Basement

Diana once remarked how appropriate it was that his office was in the basement. “The Fox’s den” she called it, and he blushed and thought her so clever. Infatuation will do that; if anyone else had said it, he’d have rolled his eyes.

She wasn’t wrong, though. The office is more a home than his apartment, a nest feathered with files and photographs. After she left, his heart cut to ribbons in her wake, it became a sanctuary he jealously guarded against intruders. Let them laugh and call him Spooky, so long as they left him alone.

Then, Scully knocked.


	4. Motel

The same vivid imagination that made him such a gifted profiler turns on him in the face of her destroyed motel room. Every shard of splintered furniture and shattered glass sparks images of violence, detailed scenarios that all end the same way: with Scully badly hurt. So comprehensive is the destruction, ranging from wall to wall, that the only thing he _cannot_ imagine is how she could have made it out unscathed.

She is not here, though. That alone gives him hope, however meager.

As if sharing the view in his turbulent mental cinema, Samantha confirms, “Your partner is alive.”


	5. Pistol

The first range day at the Academy feels almost like make-believe. Paper targets fluttering 10 yards away, aim for the X, pop pop pop.

She remembers her ER rotation. She has seen what a 9mm does to human flesh. The instructors talk about “center of mass” as if it were something homogenous, but she knows the difference between heart and lung. Stomach and spleen. Life and death.

She vows to become not just proficient but adept, spending long hours learning to master her breath, her aim, her reflexes. When she graduates, hers is the highest marksmanship score in the class.


	6. Cigarette

The acrid lingering reek of cigarette smoke hangs in the office, a mocking reminder that the man responsible for it probably knows where Scully is. The answer is simultaneously right here and completely out of reach.

Skinner remains a broken record of “drop it” and “there’s nothing you can do.”  _ Just keep doing your job, _ he says, as if chasing cultists and cryptids will accomplish a damned thing.

Mulder stands up to leave, another worthless assignment tucked under his arm. At the door, he turns back for just a moment.

“You should open a window, sir. It stinks in here.”


	7. Files

She expected to miss plenty of things when they went on the run. Family, obviously. Consistency and security. Her apartment and her furniture and the comfort of her own bed.

What she didn’t expect was how much she missed the work. Not chasing monsters, exactly, but the small work-adjacent tasks that had been part of her life for almost a decade. Research. The strangely satisfying task of poring over files to find answers hidden within.

She never in a million years expected to feel nostalgic over a package of manila folders in the office supplies section of the grocery store.


	8. Slideshow

“It’s not the same,” he mumbles, clearly not asleep like she thought.

She is sitting with her laptop in bed, trying to finish her Powerpoint presentation for this weekend’s conference. “Sorry, I can take this downstairs if it’s keeping you up.”

“It’s fine, I was just thinking. There’s just something about the hum of the projector, isn’t there? The click of the carousel advancing. This feels so much more… I dunno, sterile.”

She chuckles softly, imagining 35 year-old Mulder with access to Powerpoint. Star wipe transitions between every slide.

She reaches for his hand and squeezes it, lightly. “Maybe so.”


	9. Undercover

“Sir, I really don’t think it’s a good idea to try and hide this from her.”

“It’s not your call, Agent Mulder. Hell, it’s not even my call. This operation is strictly ‘need to know,’ and at this time, Agent Scully doesn’t meet that benchmark.”

“So you’re asking me to lie to her.”

“I’m  _ asking _ you to give her plausible deniability. For her own safety. Because if August Bremmer realizes he’s being played, there’s no telling how far he’ll go.”

_ Well, when he puts it that way…  _

“Fine. But I give it two days before she figures it out anyway.”


	10. Suits

Sometimes he dreams about them, his biological parents. A tall man with dark hair and a nose like Will’s, usually dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, sometimes with a beard, sometimes not. A woman with blue eyes and hair a couple of shades brighter than his own, some kind of doctor, if the scrubs and lab coat are anything to go by. He’s not sure how he knows it’s them. He just does.

One day, the dreams change. They’re dressed in suits and carrying guns. It scares him a little, but not as much as the other things he dreams.


	11. UFO

“You know, statistically speaking, the odds are better than good that your brother’s seen a UFO.” She raises an eyebrow, and he tilts his head. “Well, he or someone he knows.”

“How do you figure?”

“Sailors and airmen account for an unusually high proportion of UFO eyewitness reports.”

“Is that so?”

“There’s actually a long and storied history of sailors bearing witness to unexplained phenomena.”

“Mermaids and sea monsters?”

“And lights in the sky.”

“Well, even if Bill  _ has _ ever seen a UFO, he’ll never admit it.”

“Not even if we get him really drunk next Christmas?”

“Not even then.”


	12. Paranormal

He’s six the first time he encounters the word, on the cover of a tabloid in the grocery checkout line. He looks it up later in his parents’ tattered dictionary. 

_ Beyond the scope of known scientific laws and phenomena. _

He remembers when he was three and his teddy bear flew across the room by itself. When he was four and afraid of the dark, and he got in trouble for turning his light on after bedtime, even though he promised he wasn’t doing it. Last year, when he started answering questions that hadn’t been asked aloud.

“That’s me,” he whispers.


	13. Trapped

They know better than to voice their worries in front of him, reserving them to midnight whispers instead. Even if they could find his birth mother, they wouldn't ask her to take him back; he's theirs and they love him and nothing will change that. God brought him to them for a reason.

It's just that they're completely unprepared for this. For what he is becoming. Every day he seems capable of something new, each ability more miraculous than the last. 

Every messiah, however, eventually becomes a martyr. Fear alone keeps them from seeking answers, trapping them in helpless ignorance.


	14. Seeds

She grows to hate the sound.

A year ago, she’d have said silence was worse, but with silence at least she could pretend. Pretend he’s at the store, or maybe taking a nap. The sound, meanwhile, is a constant reminder.

_ Crack. _ He hasn’t left the office in seven hours.

_ Crack. _ He hasn’t come to bed in three days.

_ Crack. _ Does she even know when he showered last?

When he was gone she missed it. When they were on the run, it brought her comfort, a stable point amid the chaos. Now, though? She’s not sure she’s ever hated anything more.


	15. Faith

Mulder may be an atheist, but he is not without faith. For what is faith but trust by another name? Belief in things unseen. Conviction that a truth exists even without knowing for certain what that truth  _is_.

Faith can be misplaced. (His certainly has been, a time or twelve.) Faith can be lost, can be restored. It can be shaken and tested and proven. It can be a source of strength, a lifeline when it is otherwise hard to stay afloat.

In the lucid moments between the pain aboard the ship, his faith in Dana Katherine Scully sustains him.


	16. Conspiracy

He finds them online, scans of a zine from the mid- to late-90s. They’re buried fourteen pages deep in the search results for “psychokinesis,” and on the surface, they look no more credible than any of the other crackpot tabloid accounts he’s come across. He clicks through anyway, desperate for answers or even a hint of proof that there might be someone else out there like him.

One article leads to another, and another, none of them quite what he’s looking for, but he’s somehow compelled to keep reading. That night, he dreams inexplicably about three men handing him gifts.


	17. Family

They spend the night at Maggie’s that Christmas Eve. Scully thought nothing could be harder than last year, when Mulder was missing and she had no idea whether he was even alive. But no, this year is harder. 

William is obviously too young to know the difference, but Scully knows precisely how unfair it is that they can’t all be together. Families should be together at Christmastime.

She’s nursing him on the couch when Maggie brings her a small, wrapped package. “It’s silly, but I saw them in a shop and thought…”

Knitted fox slippers.

She smiles through her tears.


	18. Run

He is eleven the first time he feels them coming. He doesn’t know how to explain it, only that he  _knows_  they’re closing in. Men, sort of like him, but different. Dangerous. Too many to fight, even with Pa’s shotgun. His parents listen when he tells them, wide-eyed, that they need to run  _now_. Just get in the truck and go, no time to pack.

They head north and drive through the night, not stopping til they get to Aunt Marjorie’s place in Calgary. It’s not until two weeks later he finally feels like it’s safe to go back home.


	19. Apartment

One night, after a particularly exhausting shift, she nods off driving home and nearly ends up in a ditch.

“I think we should consider getting a place in the city.”

“Didn’t we both decide we were done with that life?”

“But the commute… it’s really hard sometimes.”

“Can’t you sleep at the hospital, drive home when you’re rested?”

“I don’t want to sleep at the hospital, I want to sleep with you.”

“Well I’m not moving back to DC. I can’t do it.”

“I just think–”

“I  _can’t_ , Scully. Please don’t ask me.”

She starts looking at rental listings, anyway.


	20. Informant

He comes in the house smelling of cut grass, earbuds in and head bobbing, sort of half-rapping under his breath, none of it even remotely intelligible. She looks up from her paperwork with an eyebrow raised, and he pops one earbud out.

“I found a 90s one-hit wonders station on Pandora. You remember Snow? Informer?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“I swear it played on the radio every day for six months. Licky boom-boom down?”

She snorts. “What?”

“Licky boom-boom down, Scully.”

“Mulder, I have no idea what you're talking about.”

He leers at her. “Oh, I think you do.”


	21. Sneak

Love snuck up on them, slow and stealthy. There was no fanfare, no sting of Cupid’s proverbial arrow. It hunkered down behind duty and circumstance, masquerading as loyalty and partnership. It hid in the shadows, quietly growing stronger, undetected. Only after its infiltration was nearly complete did it become visible, by then so thoroughly entwined within the structure of them that its expulsion would’ve been impossible.

She likened it once to a switch flipping, but he thinks of it more as an unveiling. It didn’t just spring into being one day; it was there all along, waiting to be recognized.


	22. Pets

“Can I ask you something?”

They’re on his couch, file folders between them, takeout containers and sock-clad feet on the coffee table.

He shrugs. “Shoot.”

“What inspired you to get fish?”

“What  _ inspired _ me?”

“Yeah, you know… something in particular that made you go, ‘Aha, fish!’”

“Aha, fish? Scully, are you sure you’re okay to drive home?”

“Mulder, I’ve had one beer. I’m just curious if there’s a story, that’s all.”

“A fish story?”

“Stop answering my questions with questions!”

“I dunno, I just like fish! They’re calming.”

It’s not a lie, exactly. But it’s not the whole truth, either.


	23. Help

The Mulder family went to exactly one carnival his entire childhood, and at this carnival, Samantha won a goldfish. She loved the damned thing, named him Goldie, spent hours just watching him swim around his little bowl.

A few months later, she was taken. Goldie went belly-up not long after, probably because no one could remember to feed him. 

Mulder got his first fish tank at Oxford, on the advice of his therapist. Something about learning to accept loss while nurturing a positive memory.

He wouldn’t say it's done  _ precisely _ that, but in its own, weird way, it has helped.


	24. Travel

On the way home after the premiere of that ridiculous Lazarus Bowl movie, they have a layover in Salt Lake City. 

“Hey, if you'd taken that transfer two years ago, you'd be home by now,” Mulder jokes.

Scully shudders. “No, thanks.”

“C’mon, I doubt it's  _ that _ bad here.”

“I'm sure it's fine. But I wouldn't want to trade everything that's happened in the last two years just for the sake of being done traveling for the day.”

“Especially the last, say, six months?” he says lightly.

She leans in close and pitches her voice low. “I wouldn't trade last  _ night _ .”


	25. Hospital

When Will is 13, he and Pa are driving home one night, and their truck is hit from the side. It happens so fast, a violent bang leaving shattered glass and crumpled metal in its wake. The impact is on Will’s side, and when the world stops spinning and he looks down, he can see a large gash in his thigh and blood soaking through his jeans.

His usually-unflappable Pa’s voice quavers. “Oh Lord, just… just hang on, son. We’ll get you to a hospital.”

But before he’s even finished the sentence, Will’s skin starts to knit itself back together.


	26. Boss

The first few weeks at the hospital were rough, and not only for the expected reasons. Yes, the hours were long and the cases often difficult and emotionally draining, but as someone who never really had a major problem with authority before, she was surprised by how much she chafed at having a boss again.

Aside from taking the boards and requalifying for her medical license, Scully hadn’t needed to answer to anyone for years. She used to thrive on structure and clear expectations, but now they felt stifling.

Mulder chuckled and rubbed her back. “You’ll get used to it.”


	27. Jealousy

She’d heard the stories, of course.  _ Old habits die hard, don’t they, Fox? _ But once she’s actually back and able to see things for herself, she doesn’t get it. Agent Scully is pretty, certainly, but she’s hardly his type. Maybe it’s all just baseless gossip after all.

But no, there’s definitely something in the way he looks at her. And the way she looks at him couldn’t be clearer. Yet they don’t  _ act _ like they’re sleeping together. It’s puzzling.

_ He used to look at me like that. _

It is stupid to be jealous -- she left  _ him, _ after all -- and yet...


End file.
